Not Nor Mal is Mal Webb's 2016 album. 21 songs, all real instruments and voice, written, sung, played
and recorded by Mal, with a few excellent guests:
Kylie Morrigan: Violin (Spur five string) on tracks 1-4, 7, 14-17 and 20
Aurora Kurth: Lead vocal on So Over You
Sam Lemann: Electric guitar on Brooke's Jetty
Jenni Pittock (niece): Flute on Follicle Drive
"All the Birds": Clarinet by Susan Robertson (Mum), introduction by
Grandad (so BBC!) and applause by John Webb, Granny and family, all
from a 1970 recording.
Mal plays nylon string guitar, piano, mbira, ukulele (strummed
and drummed), banjo uke, electric bass, Swales gourd bass, trombone,
slide trumpet, melodica, Suzuki Andes, chromatic harmonica, whistling
and all manner of vocal techniques (sideways yodeling, throat singing,
beatbox, etc).
Anything that sounds like drums is either Mal's mouth or ukulele
drumming. And anything that sounds like birds, electronic or reversed
is also just Mal's voice or whistling (with a bit of mic flapping). In
short, it's all real, in real time ... really!
Mixed by Mal Webb (except tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 14 and 18 by Jim Moynihan)
Mastered by Jim Moynihan (Spoonbill)

Listen to it and/or buy it

Bandcamp: You can hear it
and/or buy a digital copy (with all the artwork) as mp3 or WAV (CD
quality!) Yes, you can hear the whole album, but Bandcamp limits the
number of times you can do that. https://malwebb.bandcamp.com/album/not-nor-mal
Buy the CD from me! Click here.MGM Distribution: You can order it in stores (JB, Sanity, etc.) http://www.thegroovemerchants.comiTunes and Spotify: These options aren't as finacially good for me, but that's OK!

Notes on each track

1. Give It Up - 4:44. I wrote this for my brother John, who isn't a fan
of audience participation. Neither is my faux Pa, Alan. And a few
years ago at Glastonbury, when
Beyonce performed, she came out and yelled "Hello GlastonBERRY", a tall
English chap next to me exclaimed, "Oh, for Christ's
sake, it's 'Glast'nbry'... it's 3 syllables... how come people can't
get these things right?!"after which he promptly left! I just had to
write this song. You may note that the chord progression goes A A Dm
Dm throughout the song, but I add or subtract 2/4 bars between the
sections such that the one shifts. Not as disturbingly as in Brick, but
still fun. This concept was inspired by Once In A Lifetime by Talking
Heads / Brian Eno, which shifts like that between the verses and
choruses (to my ear, anyway) and Angry (GIMA) by Bobby McFerrin, in
which I'm never quite sure where he's feeling the one... I hope to ask
him one day!

2. Henrietta Lacks - 3:49. In 1993, my Dad told me about HeLa cells,
but at that point it was thought that the woman's name was Helen Lane,
so I wrote my song with that name. I wrote it for the Oxo Cubans as a
disco groove and we performed it quite a few times, but never recorded
it. Then when I found out that her real name was Henrietta Lacks, I
started to rewite the lyrics, but people liked the name Helen Lane so
much that I just changed a line in the last verse to explain the
confusion. That's the version that's on my Trainer Wheels album, with a
sweet guitar accompaniment. But I decided the song needed a proper
rewrite (losing the name Helen Lane altogether) and a return to its
disco origins. I hope you like it!

3. Plague - 1:31. Overpopulation is a tricky subject
and I wanted to express that in a song. I resolved long ago not to have
kids, both for the sake of the planet and my desire to be a good
uncle (and faux unk), which I think is a very important role to play...
OK, sure, there's a little fear and selfishness thrown in there too... I
do love the mummy back guarantee! This started as a solo voice piece,
but adding Ky's
violin really helps express the lyrics to their full extremes, from
thrashy face punk to faux Disney. Yes, it's really just two tracks, one violin and one vocal.

4. Brick - 3:25. I wrote this song in about 1994 when my sister Cath
struggling with the idea of putting on an exhibition, whence I got the
idea for an "inhibition" of art, presented in a hidden cupboard (very
hipster, in a post modern way!) She did exhibit in the end, with great
success. Essentially Brick is more about communication struggles in
relationships. Yes, the word "Brick" is often misheard as "prick", but
that kinda works in the song too! I arranged it for the Oxo Cubans in
a clumsy ska groove and we played it many times but never recorded it.
Around 2003 I came up with a guitar version, around which all the
chords are the notes A, B and E with different bass notes undernaeth
(every note is used except Bb, which is horrid!) But I really got
excited when I came up with the idea of the shifting loops. The 3
beatbox loop layers (spitty crunch, cloppy clicks and straight Ps and
Bs) are 16 beats long and run for the whole song... simple! BUT the
"one" (the first beat of the groove) is shifted by what the voice and
other instruments do, such that throughout the song, nearly every one
of the 16ths is felt as the one as at some point! And the middle
instrumental section goes from 16 to 15 to 14 to 13 to 12 to 11 to 10
to 9 to 8 beats (Kylie and I had to practice that part A LOT!) But my
aim was to make it so that all the complexity washes over you until you
actually listen in for it. Let me know what you think! Oh, and the ambient
loop is 17 beats long... just for fun!

5. The Lot - 0:48. This is a true story... sort of. On the hamburger
menu of a takeaway shop in Mostyn Street, Castlemaine , they had 'The
Lot'*, but below that, they also had 'The Lot with extras'.
When I questioned the woman in the shop, she said "'the lot' doesn't
have beetroot or pineapple". I asked, "But shouldn't 'the lot' have
every possible option on it?" to which she replied, "No, that'd be 'the
works'". This irritated me so much, I said, "'The Works', 'The Lot'...
it should be the same thing! It's not just a hamburger with 'a lot',
it's with 'the lot'...it's the definite article!" at which point her
dull gaze led me to tie up my rantette and order 'the lot with
extras'... hurumph! The resultant song is a very short and punchy
acapella number, featuring that classic Pauline Hanson line.
*For people from UK, etc. who don't know the term, 'The Lot' means a hamburger with everything on it... kind of obvious really.

6. Fun Detector - 4:03. I think the term
"fun detector" originated on a Batacuda (roving drumming group) tour to
Singapore, a land brimming with fun detectors, who are all the full
bottle on the regulations and eager to let you know where and when you
aren't allowed to have fun (i.e. most places). I'm not sure who
actually coined the term: It may have been me, but hey, it's hard to
know with that kind of authorship thing. The recording built steadily
over the past few years, adding the horns, then the ukulele drumming
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf_VMuQTYdE ), then the mbira and
finally the Suzuki Andes (Kylie's idea), which really caps it off! Yes,
I can play that guitar solo live!

7. So Over You - 4:37. I wrote
this for (and not about!) my friend Aurora Kurth, who'd asked me to
write her "a tragic love song... something Shirley Bassey might sing".
It's kind of harsh, but Aurora really works its schizophrenic extremes.
I'm hoping to send it to Shirley Bassey one day. I think we all know
people like this character and we're all a little bit like her, eh!

8. Oblivious Man - 2:39. My niece, nephew, sister and I were once playing music for my Gran in the
public space of her nursing home and all the residents there were
loving it. But then a guy came in a started vacuuming, completely
oblivious. After a few seconds of stunned incredulity, I began to make
up a song for him called Oblivious Man, which all enjoyed greatly,
except for him, as he remained oblivious! Eventually a nurse came in,
assessed the situation, got his attention and suggested that he do the
vacuuming later, due to the music going on. He replied, "Oh, OK" good
naturedly and wandered off.
I continued to work on the song, making the character more of a
superhero (like a extreme version of Roger Ramjet) who has no idea he's
saved the day. Around that time, an animator called Evan Newby contacted
me about collaborating. I checked out his website and he had a cartoon
called Oblivious Man, who was pretty much my charactor, in drawn form!
Now my song is finished, I think OM needs to come to life... we have
plans!

9. TLA - 3:31. TLA can stand for either Three
Letter Abbreviation or Three Letter Acronym*. Strangely enough, there've
been a few TLA songs written, but nothing
really comprehensive. Mine is in a Pacific Island style, as the word
"Tielei" sounds
(to me) like a Polynesian greeting. I've avoided countries, companies
and organisations on the
whole, as that would make it toooo long! I was
determined to make it all make sense, in a pointless kind of a way.
Have you noticed that POW and LBW both have the
same number of syllables as their meanings? And note that the melody I
sing on WWW makes the shape of a W.

*FYI, acronyms are abbreviations which are
said as a word (such as PIN, SIM, GIF, etc).

10. Brooke's Jetty - 4:17.
Brooke's Jetty in St Kilda, which features on two of my CD covers was
neglected by those responsible for it (Parks Victoria) and then
demolished without any public consultation in 2015. I've lived in St
Kilda for 25 years and windsurf off the dog beach next to Brooke's
Jetty, so I was horrified when they destroyed it. There's a fine crew
of locals (including a few lawyers) who are pushing them to rebuild it
and I thought I'd lend a hand and a larynx to the cause. Sam Lemann,
another St Kilda local and gorgeous guitarist, kindly recorded the
perfect electric guitar part for the song. Thanks Sam!

11. One Finger Fanfare - 1:01. I wrote this fanfare for the opening
ceremony of Woodford Festival 2014/15, but they ended up not using it!
We did eventually use it as a parade piece and then for the closing
Fire Event... phew! The name is due to the fact that on Bb valve brass
instruments, the whole piece is played with only second valve, thus it
could be called "Middle Finger Fanfare", but I decided against that!
And ironically, I recorded it only on slide instruments, thus it could
be called "2 Position Fanfare", which doesn't have a great ring to it
either. Regardless, its positional and valvey simplicity made it
accessible to all the players (many of whom were novice), despite its
otherwise complexity.

12. Rooster Tree - 3:42. For more than a decade I'd noticed the tree on the hill just before
Broadford as you drive up the Hume Highway from Melbourne. One day
mentioned it to a group of locals up in Wangaratta and they all said,
"Aw yeah, the Rooster Tree!" and then turned to each other and said,
"Oh, you've noticed it too!" After much discussion (and abhorrent
mention of squirrels), a woman at a neighbouring table leaned over and
said, "Hey, you know that Rooster Tree has a Facebook page with more
that 5000 members!" Thus, I decided it needed an anthem. You need to
know that "gallinaceous" means chicken-like. In recent years of good
rainfall, the ol' Rooster has got a bit shaggy and when I drop my CD to
the owner's house (I'm pretty sure I've worked out on whose property
the tree resides) I might see if they're up for some judicious
pruning... is that wrong? Hmmm. I thought I'd better make the song a
"driving rhythm" and anyone trying to work out the banjo uke part,
remember I'm left handed and don't restring my uke!

13. Ad For Beer - 1:37. This is a
true story. Chick Ratten, who ran the Rainbow Hotel in Fitzroy, once
said to me "yeah, I've been playing your demo in my car... I love it,
but I can't give you a gig... your music's not a good ad for beer". I'm
told he used the phrase quite often. Sadly, Chick died 8/8/2008 at
about the time I was finishing the song (I had no idea he was unwell).
There's a nice article about Chick from the AGE at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/rainbow-warrior-and-musos-patron-saint-pedals-off-on-last-ride-20080812-3u6f.html?skin=text-only
This song actually began as an instrumental and was recorded as "Shk
Shing" on a Bomba CD and I retro fitted the lyrics. Note that the first
and second phrases are the same, except shifted by quaver (1/8th note).

14. Load - 3:59 - On a plane once I was sitting beside the head of transport for Australia
Post. He'd been at a Volvo truck launch in Alice Springs. The plane was
delayed, so we spoke at length. I asked him how much mail went by train and
he said, "Ha! When I first got this job, I commissioned a study into
using trains and transfer stations versus just trucks and found that
trains are 3 times more efficient than trucks... 3 to 1! 3 to 1! People
kept saying, "But door to door has to be better" and I just kept
repeating "3 to 1! 3 to 1!"... they must've thought I was a loony. And
it didn't help anyway... people are obsessed with trucks". Thus, I wrote
this song. I was spending a lot of time with Dad, helping with his
chemotherapy, and discussing the song with him spurred me on to finish
it. Thankfully, with the rising acceptance of intermodal freight
systems in other parts of the world, good sense may eventually prevail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport

15. Picture - 2:58. This song is inspired by Michael Franks' lovely metaphoric love songs.
It wasn't written for anyone... just hopeful! Musically, it's inspried
by Clifford Brown's Joy Spring and its key shifting AABA form (F, F#,
G, F). I went with F, G, A Eb so the A sections always rise to the
next. It's rather old school big bandy style. The arrangement on the
recording plays with a mixture of muted and unmuted strings and brass.
The last note of highest violin part required me to finger the note
while Kylie slid the harmonic up the neck... I held back from giving
myself a violin credit on the album!

16. All The Birds - 5:45. I did a song for Mum Susan's 70th birthday. I played it live at the big
family party and everyone sung along and played their harmonicas
gloriously. Mum loved it (and managed to retain her composure
throughout... watch the video of the performance on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN9dYJuYFi4 )
On the recording, that's my Grandad doing the intro, taken from a 1970
recording (I was 3 1/2)... how BBC does he sound?! And that's Mum
playing the clarinet from the same recording... that took a little bit
of fiddling to make it fit. Thanks to my aunts Margaret and Jean for
their fine contributions, like the poem mum wrote (I've included a link
to a photo of the original). And thanks to Mary and Alice for editing,
ideas and a few arched eyebrows (Alice wanted it to be "a keg of
kisses"... noice!)
Here's a few useful facts: "Bilione baci" means 1,000,000,000,000
kisses in Italian. Mum really did cook us brains for our birthday
breakfasts... yum! She took up hamonica at 65, but isn't into blues at
all. She was a fan of a Canadian series of books about a girl called
Susannah, so her mum, my granny, used to call her Susannah
Boardinghouse. Aunt Margaret told me that mum wrote the poem "Laugh and
you'll get there" when she was about 6 or 7, but mum doesn't recall
writing it at all! But she does remember the family quoting it often.
Of course, this song was written in secret, so I found that out
afterwards. Paul Mills bullied my brother John at school and mum was a
classic for saying things like "Well, I hear he's not very happy at
home...". There are many other little in-jokes, but they could never be
explained.
Original Poem: http://malwebb.customer.netspace.net.au/LaughAnd.jpg

17. Roadworks - 4:31. This isn't a true story... but it might be! Note that the whistle and voice beeps are 8 against 9 of the groove.

18. Pash Crush - 4:37. This song was
originally a little instrumental, but while it was being rehearsed,
Nicky Bomba started chanting "Pash Crush, Pash Crush" in the breaks
(inspired by a bottle of cordial that graced the table at tuba player
Wayne Freer's house). I then wrote the lyrics and recorded it with the
band, Bomba. When I used to sing it (solo and with Into Wishing) I
tended to drop the chant (at the risk of offending Nick!), but for my
recording, I've re-added it both forward and backward! This song uses a
weird scale I made up: 1, flat2, 3, sharp4, 5, flat6 and 7. It's like a
blues scale starting on the major 7th! It turns out that this scale is
known as Raga Puriya Daneshri in Indian music.

19. Win - 2:57. I wanted to write a song about winning that didn't involve anyone
losing. Like something Dr Suess would write. The groove is just 4/4,
but it might not seem like it! The low bass sound is buzzing the tip of
my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

21. Wake Up Instrumental - 1:35. I
recorded this instrumental version of my song Wake Up as part of my
soundtrack for UK puppet company Wishworks' show, 'Whispering Smith'.
We ended up not using it, so I though it was an excellent way to finish
my album.

The full backstory of this album:

Making this album was quite an adventure: After finishing my 3rd solo album, "Dodgy", in 2008, I did all
manner of projects, such as working with Spoonbill and Aurora
Jane, making my "Live and
Instructional" DVD and recording and mixing the 4th Totally Gourdgeous
album "Pun Kin" and the music for the "Woodley"
TV show at my house. Throughout that time I was working on my next solo
album, Not Nor Mal and in 2012, I buckled down to finishing it. While I
made good headway, something always popped up that caused me to delay
it, like recording and touring with Formidable Vegetable Sound System,
forming a duo with Kylie Morrigan (inspiring me to explore new
arrangement ideas) and finishing the 36 song 2nd album for Ti Tree School.
All good things indeed. Then my Dad's illness and consequent passing in
Novmber 2015, which was devastating for me, charged me with
determination to finish my album, having written two songs honouring
him. And the album songlist suddenly leapt from 18 to 21!While
I had a little more confidence in my studio skills, I was still
daunted by the idea of mixing my next
solo album, for which I'd done some big multitrack recorded
arrangements, including Kylie Morrigan on violins. Having worked with
Jim Moynihan
(Spoonbill) on his material and on the Woodley soundtrack, I got him to
remix and
master one of my songs and loved the result. Yet I still felt that for
the majority
of the Not Nor Mal songs, I should again mix with Ross Cockle (who
had mixed my last two solo albums
with fab results). The problem was that in 2009 I stopped using
Protools (the recording software Ross uses) and
started using Reaper, which I much prefer. As a result, I couldn't
premix the songs as much as I had in the past and Ross really had to
start mixing from scratch. He did a great job of it, but throughout the
process, I increasingly got the feeling that I should really be mixing
it myself (Ross even said that at one point). But I was having trouble
hearing it, as I was a bit freaked out by it all. So I kept on, as I
was on a deadline to get it done before I went to Europe, mixing the
remaining tracks with Jim and consequently mastered it all. I headed
home to my own monitor speakers, compared the masters to different
stages of the process, and, in a moment of painful clarity, came to the
rather daunting realisation that I wasn't happy with it. And there were
things I wanted to rerecord in several tracks and re-edit, etc. But it
was good, as I could finally clearly hear what I wanted. I'd learnt a
lot from watching Ross mixing those tracks and even though I'd paid him
and he was very understanding about it all, I still feel bad about it.
Jim was also very understanding and was determined to get his mixes
(and the way we master it) such that they met my expectations. I went
to Europe, continuing to tweak my mixes in hire cars and on friends'
(Alex Cellier and Steve Jefroy) speakers and on returning home, Jim and
I finally finished it off, well to my satisfaction. Phew!

The
artwork came about after YEARS of development. Much like the music on
the CD, I had a good idea of what I wanted. The front cover photo took
quite a lot of prep, practicing my back to sail windsurfing technique
and working out how to keep the slide trumpet safe in the process. My
neice Alice Bittisnich took the photo from Brooke's Jetty, which is now
sadly gone. I'd designed the interlocking Mal Webb logo years before
and my sister Cath Webb kindly turned it into clouds as a pencil
drawing. Alice then computer painted Cath's drawing. The
back cover photo is me actually wearing all my instruments. The set up
was painful, and fairly risky to both me and the instruments, but the
resulting photos, taken by Dominic Hook (assisted by Kylie Morrigan) are
perfect. My sister Mary Webb, Kylie and Mum proofread the CD text and
lyrics. Then the amazing Charlie Mgee put the whole design together and
messed with it in the best possible way!

Printed and pressed by Austep Music (100% recycled and vegetable based inks)